Put Your Face in DOOMIncrease the immersiveness of
id's classic FPS by replacing the space
marine's pictures with your own[Discuss (1) | Link to this hack]

id Software's groundbreaking DOOM almost
singlehandedly created the modern FPS genre. With style oozing from
every crevice, a near-infinite amount of customizability, and an open
source codebase, it's no wonder that people still
play variants such as PrBoom (http://prboom.sourceforge.net/).

As any dedicated modder will tell you, half the fun is in making your
own fun. Earlier games were also hackable, but DOOM was unique in
encouraging gamers to add their own maps,
weapons, and graphics. Since it was a pre-Windows pioneer, the tools
aren't very user-friendly, but they exist and work
with a little prodding.

Creating your own maps is a lot of work, but it's
much easier to replace individual graphics. One good way to start is
to change the picture of your character in the
game's status bar.

Finding DOOM

Start by downloading PrBoom or an equivalent. PrBoom is nice in that
it supports Windows and Linux equally well. Windows installation is
as easy as downloading the latest Windows ZIP archive (2.2.4 at the
time of writing) and unzipping it into an appropriate directory.

If you have the registered version of DOOM somewhere,[1] copy its .wad files into the PrBoom
directory. Otherwise, look for a file called
doom1.wad online. This is the shareware version.

How WADs Work

DOOM stores all its maps, images, and sounds in WAD files. There are
two types. IWADs are the original internal WADs shipped with the
game; they contain the default game information. PWADs are
player-supplied WADs that change or add parts of the game. They can
be much smaller, because anything they don't supply
directly comes from the original IWAD.

Think of a WAD as a directory containing subdirectories and files,
somewhat like a ZIP archive. To replace a particular graphic, you
have to know its details within the IWAD and add an equivalent
graphic to your PWAD. That's where tools such as
DeuTex (http://www.teaser.fr/~amajorel/deutex/) come
in.

TIP

Technically, you're not supposed to be able to
create or use PWADs with the shareware IWAD. I renamed
doom1.wad to doom.wad, and
PrBoom and DeuTex were happy.

DeuTex is a WAD disassembler, meaning that it can disassemble a WAD
into a real directory. It runs on DOS and Linux. Download and extract
DeuTex into its own directory, then extract the data from
doom.wad with a command resembling:

$ ./deutex -extract /usr/share/games/doom/doom.wad

This creates several directories such as
textures/ and sounds/ as
well as a file called wadinfo.txt.

Replacing an Image

Besides trial and error, there's really no good way
to figure out which image within this WAD to replace. Fortunately, I
can tell you that the files in graphics/stf*
represent the face in the status bar. I replaced the god-mode powerup
image (type iddqd while playing) with a
picture of my nephew. DeuTex extracts this image to
graphics/stfgod0.pnm.

The trickiest part of this process is building a 24 29 image that
looks good in DOOM, especially with its restricted palette. I cropped
and adjusted the picture until it fit, then saved it as a 256-color
GIF file in graphics/stfgod0.gif. Be sure to
keep the same base name as the file you're
replacing; otherwise, DOOM won't know how to find
the resource. It's okay to use a different file
extension; DeuTex converts BMP, GIF, or JPEG files to PPM files
automatically when it builds a WAD. If you do use a different
extension, though, be sure to move the original file out of the way
so that DeuTex will use your replacement.

TIP

For best results, remove the background of the image, leaving only
the subject's face and head. The image is much less
jarring this way.

The next step is to build a manifest file to tell DeuTex which files
to assemble. Open the wadinfo.txt file in your
favorite text editor. It has several internal sections for the
different types of files within the WAD. Delete everything that you
haven't replaced. In my case, I had a very short
file:

# List of Pictures (with insertion point)
[graphics]
STFGOD0 -5 -2

Be sure to keep the [graphics] heading, though you
can delete the entries beneath it for the images you want to stay the
same. Save the file with a different name, perhaps
godinfo.txt, so you can make other modifications
by copying the relevant lines from the original manifest.

Building a PWAD

The final step is to assemble all the new resources into a PWAD.
DeuTex again can do this. Use a command resembling:

$ ./deutex -build godinfo.txt baby.wad

If everything goes well, this will write a new PWAD called
baby.wad in your current directory. DeuTex
helpfully refuses to overwrite an existing file, so delete or move
baby.wad if you've already
generated one.

Launching Your New PWAD

To see the effects of your work, launch PrBoom with your new PWAD.
Use the -file switch to give the location of the
file:

$ prboom -file baby.wad

Start a new game, type iddqd, and marvel at
the connection between innocence and ultimate power, seen in .

Figure 1. An alternate god-mode image

The same technique here works for replacing any image or sound within
the IWAD files, including monsters and weapons. Remember, if you can
do it for one image, you can do it for many.